So today we will be moving on in our confession of faith to chapter 2, which is entitled, Of God and of the Holy Trinity. There are only three paragraphs and I will be attempting to treat each one of them individually in three lessons, but as I tried with chapter 1, of the Holy Scripture will be reminding you to consider what comes before and what comes after, considering the tree, considering the forest, and considering the forest, considering the tree, always keeping in mind the minute details, but also the bigger picture. Again, the Confession is a woven document. expounding or teaching a cohesive theological system, and chapters and paragraphs anticipate things which will be explained later on in more detail in the Confession, while also at the same time laying down foundations to get there. So it's very helpful to read the Reformed Confessions in this way. If God has revealed Himself to us, It makes sense to ask who God is. Everyone is a theologian. Everyone must ponder God and who He is. It's inescapable. John Calvin, that great reformer, begins his Institutes of the Christian Religion in this vein, stating this reality beautifully. He says, quote, No one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God in whom he lives and moves. For quite clearly, the mighty gifts with which we are endowed are hardly from ourselves. Indeed, our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God. Then, by these benefits, shed like dew from heaven upon us, we are led as by rivulets to the spring itself." Every image-bearer of God is confronted with revelation of God. Now, harking back to chapter 1, we know that this is the case in both general and special revelation. Who is this good and powerful God that is manifested to us in creation? Who is this good and wise and powerful God that reveals His wrath from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men? Men who do what with this revelation? They suppress the truth and unrighteousness. And so we are left without excuse. There will be no one on the day of judgment with an excuse to bring to God. We know because of our disobedience and our guilt and shame, we know that we are worthy of death for the sins that we've committed. And because we do not glorify Him as God and we are not thankful to Him, as Paul teaches us in Romans chapter 1. And yet, who is this good and wise and powerful God who has indeed revealed Himself, not just in creation, but has revealed Himself in a special way and declared His will unto His Church? A revelation by which He can give sufficiently the knowledge of Himself and His will, which is necessary unto salvation, as we discussed in Chapter 1. This is the God with whom we have to do. So then it is most appropriate to move and consider God and His nature, His attributes, His excellencies, perfections, and His works. And we must take great care to confess in clear and concise language language and concepts that have been graciously passed down to us by the saints of the past, to confess with the Church Catholic, Catholic there being the best sense of the word, universal, right? To confess with the Church Catholic with all fear and reverence and awe, confess what Scripture teaches and reveals about the Lord our God, who is but one, only living and true God, that we, as paragraph two states in this chapter, that we may give what is only due to Him, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience, and whatever He is further pleased to require of us." Remember, saints, We are not the first Christians to read and prayerfully study the Holy Scripture. What these Reformed confessions do successfully, in my opinion, is to build upon what has come before, and in many ways, confess exactly what the Church of the past has said at times, almost exactly. What Christians have labored in controversy and in battling heresy, they fought to prayerfully search and study and explain the Scriptures and to defend the Christian doctrine of God. Unfortunately, we live in a time of theological novelties. And even those who claim to subscribe to and confess these Reformed confessions, they do not confess, but pay lip service, I think. You know, these men and these Christians who say they subscribe to these confessions, they tinker with the doctrine of God. And they start to jettison concepts because they are either ignorant of them, or have been persuaded by insufficient and unbiblical arguments, in my opinion, to go back to the drawing board, so to speak, and recast a new doctrine of God. Friends, that's dangerous. So, we must move with caution. Dr. Carl Truman, who used to be a professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, I'm not sure where he's teaching now, but he couldn't have put our climate in better words. I highly recommend his writing to you all. And he says, this is a long quote, In the Reformation, it was the innovative thinking of the Sassinians. Now, the Sassinians are the followers of two men, Lelio and Faustus Sassinus, and they, at the time of the Reformation, started to come up with these new ideas about God. And so they were innovative in their thinking. It says, on matters of atonement and divine being, which were the most dangerous challenge to Protestantism. Indeed, Socinianism started as a Biblicist movement. It ended up advocating an embodied Unitarian God with limited or no knowledge of the future. Yet throughout it, it claimed a high view of Scripture. So that, I mean, so here these group, and followers of these men, Sosinnaeus, they claimed that God had an actual body, that he was one person, that he didn't really know the future, he was limited in his knowledge, but they had a very high and esteemed view of the scriptures. Now that sounds like a lot of the cults that we have. We consider their strange views about God and about Christ, but what do they always say? Well, we believe the Scriptures, and they have the highest esteem for the Scriptures. But that's the point that Karl Truman is trying to make. He says the problem is that the doctrine of God is a more complicated matter than the authority of Scripture. When someone starts to tinker with the doctrine of scripture, many Christians instinctively feel something nefarious is being done. But when someone starts to tinker with the doctrine of God, many simply assume that very clever people are engaged in improving the tradition. It is no coincidence that the reformed of the 16th and 17th centuries did very little to revise or alter the doctrine of God which they inherited from the late Middle Ages. Men of the time, like Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages and Duns Scotus, you don't need to necessarily know who those men are right away, but men like those provided sources for understanding the being of God and his relationship to his creatures, which was capable of sustaining Orthodox Christian faith and life. No alternative models since have proved as durable or effective. That is why chapter two of both the Westminster Confession and the Second London Baptist Confession both unequivocally affirm the late medieval doctrine of God. After all, it is the biblical doctrine of God. I mean, and that's what we're here trying to confess and to try to understand. We're trying to understand what Scripture teaches about who God is. So this is an important point to consider. You know, we depart and we reject and affirm against the Roman Catholic Church in its teaching on the doctrine of Scripture, right? As we went through chapter one, we elaborated and we explained in several places where that was the case, that we reject Rome's teaching about Scripture. But here, there's hardly anything that we can raise against Rome's doctrine of God. Now, That's not a blank check. So don't misunderstand me. To be sure, and to quote J.V. Fesco in his helpful work on the theology of the Westminster Standards, he says, quote, reformed theologians sharply disagreed with Roman Catholics or Roman Catholic opponents where the doctrine of God intersects with the doctrine of soteriology, the doctrine of salvation. Clearly we disagree with the Roman Catholic Church on salvation and those issues. So there was disagreement, but the doctrine of God was not an area of significant theological debate between the Reformers and the Roman Catholics. And I've read Roman Catholics on the doctrine of God and on the Trinity, And there, of course, will always have to be great care and discernment in reading those. But I'll admit, it has helped to sharpen some of my thinking. Because again, they confess the medieval doctrine of God. And again, in the Reformation, that really wasn't a big point of contention. So we share a lot of what they confess, unlike our doctrine of scripture. Like I said, I can learn from Roman Catholics, and we can on this particular point. I don't want this to be a blank check, especially when I can't really stomach the horrendous and blasphemous book covers that they usually have with images of the Trinity and images of Christ. You know which books are on my show? You know which books are on my show for a likely Roman Catholic? It's because they have post-its on the covers. And I place sticky notes on them and try to just not have those out like that. And of course, in a book like that, that teaches the doctrine of God, they always usually try to leave room for their form of doxology, and then Mary gets involved, and that's the part of the book that I really would just want to rip out. But I hope I'm not overstressing the point. We can learn from Roman Catholic theologians on the doctrine of God, and it has sharpened my thinking. And to be sure, you don't have to be digging in and around Roman Catholic works to gain a better understanding on the doctrine of God. That's not what I'm saying. So the Reformed faith has an embarrassment of riches on the doctrine of God. But as I mentioned, we live in an age of theological novelty. And unfortunately, that novelty has come from mostly contemporary evangelical, quote unquote, reformed, quote unquote, Calvinistic scholars and teachers. These are the ones who are innovating, not the Roman Catholics. I would say that most contemporary works on the doctrine of God unless they explicitly come out and say, in one form or another, that they're paying due attention to listening to the voice of the church of the past, which is important, as I talked about, when we read the Scriptures, right? We're not the only Christians who have read the Bible, right? We don't always have to go back to the drawing board, right? Yes, Scripture is our only authority, not tradition or the exegetical works of fallible men, but we would be remiss not to listen. So, if you're considering reading a contemporary work on the doctrine of God, again, unless they are very explicit that they will be listening to the church of the past and listening to what things have been said, by the church and the saints of old who hammered these issues out amid controversy, then they're not worth your time. They're not worth your time. Stick to the tried and true works of dead men. I always like to tell people I read more dead men than anything. And also read the works of the men who are now, who are now, even in Presbyterian and Reformed Baptist circles, continuing in their footsteps. You know, there's a resurgence in Reformed circles, a movement to retrieve, in several parts in our theology, the faith once for all delivered to the saints. and those parts which in some respects have been left completely rotted and almost undiscernable as anything even remotely biblical by the itch of novelty that men always seem to want to scratch. There are good contemporary works on the doctrine of God and I'm thankful to see and read them and given time to recommend them to you. So let us begin by thinking of the structure of this portion of the confession. Now let's zoom out of chapter 2 and contemplate the rest of the chapters on foundational and first principles that we'll be going over, Lord willing, in the next weeks and months. So we spoke of two foundational principles to doing theology, right? Scripture and God, right? Those are the first two chapters of the confession. So those are the foundational principles of doing theology. Now, I won't reiterate all of what was said in part one of the Holy Scriptures, except to remind you that Scripture is the principle of knowing, right? By it, we can come to know the only living and true God. And God is the foundational principle of being. existence our being in existence is from him and depends upon him and so in contemplating God we must consider God in himself ad intra which is Latin for internal inward toward the inside and And so we see the layout of the chapters of the Confession. Chapter 2 deals with God's nature and all that that entails, His essence, His attributes, discussions of what distinguishes but does not separate Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they decree and will according to their nature. They will in accordance with who they are. They're the one living and true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, right? And so appropriately, then chapter three talks about God's decree, right? We need to know who God is, and then what he does internally in himself. And then we contemplate God and His works, ad extra, which is Latin for external, outward, toward the outside. And so we have chapters on those things, creation and providence. And obviously His work of grace, redemption, we will consider ad extra, but that won't be for quite some time, obviously. There will be some overlap in these chapters. Remember, things are mentioned or laid down in the Confession, anticipating what is to come and what will be explained in more depth later on. So as we will see in Chapter 2, we do speak of God's works ad extra, but it's taken for granted, and then later on we'll dive into it more in other chapters. But I wanted to, again, I wanted to bring to your attention the great care and logical consistency and approach of the Confession in discussing these articles of the Christian religion. And when appropriate, like I said I would, to comment and to bring it to light, to show it to you. Because, again, theology is a precise science. Everyone is a theologian. Everyone tries to systematize their theology, their knowledge of God, whether it be good or bad theology or for better or for worse. Everyone has to do that. Everyone has to do that. I would hope that all of us would be seeking to be good theologians and competent theologians, especially pastors and elders, especially. So to separate being a pastor elder from being a theologian, I think, is not good. And that's very helpful in contemporary American evangelical, you know, it's, you know, we hear that so much. Oh, I'm not a theologian. Now, I understand most mean it theologian technical sense, right? It is an actual profession. And, you know, a theologian does spend his time doing theology. Unlike a pastor who would not only have to do theology, but also, you know, not just sit and write, but pastor a church, right? But again, everyone is a theologian. And all of us, I would hope, would be trying to be good and competent ones. So, again, when appropriate, I'll try to show you the structure of the confession, and how maybe understanding this can give you something to hook all of these things we'll be talking about. Now, we zoomed out for just a bit. We're looking at chapters 2 and 3, and chapters 4 and 5. Let's zoom back in and consider chapter 2 directly. So, paragraph 1 has us consider the attributes of God, and that is what we'll be looking at today. God's singularity, God's independence or His self-existence, His aseity, as some of you guys have heard that term, His incomprehensibility, where does mystery play in? God's spirituality, His infinity, His sovereignty, and in that, its extent, its rule, its goal. We consider the love of God, the justice of God, positively described, rewarding those who seek Him, And negatively, he punishes the guilty, right? In paragraphs 2 and 3 respectively, in the coming weeks, paragraph 2 deals with the relations of God to his creatures, his self-sufficient independence from them, his sovereign dominion over them, his absolute knowledge of them, his utter sanctity before them, his intrinsic claims upon them. And paragraph 3 gets to the triunity of God. There is where we will deal with the doctrine of the Trinity head on. It affirms the doctrine of the Trinity and classical Christian terms and language. It talks about the unity of the three subsistences or persons. Don't get hung up on those words. We will be explaining them and we will be defining them. That is so important. and it talks about the distinction in paragraph 3 between the three subsistences. So the unity and their distinction, how they can be distinguished but not separated. And then it gives an explanation and its relevance. Now, today we are looking at paragraph 1, so let us read. The Lord our God is but one only living and true God, whose subsistence is in and of himself, infinite in being and perfection, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself, a most pure spirit, invisible without body, parts, or passions, who only hath immortality dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, who is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and withal, meaning in addition, most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty. Wow. Now let's circle back. The Lord our God is but one only living and true God. So the Scriptures reveals to us who God is. It teaches us of his nature, character, and works. But in several places in Scripture, we are told explicitly who God is, and that he alone is it. He is the one only living and true God. So we confess as Christians what the scriptures plainly teach, and that is that there is only one God. There is only one God. Christians, despite what Muslim critics of our faith say, as well as some Jewish critics say about Christians, Christians are monotheists. We believe there is only one God. We worship one God because there is only one God to be worshipped. Only one God that exists. Now, He is the living and true God. In light of the fact that there are indeed other gods, Now, I'm not contradicting myself, and neither does Scripture when it speaks of God as the only living and true God, the only God that exists, and yet it also speaks of other gods existing. How do we make sense of that? Well, there's no contradiction, right? Obviously, it's plain, is that the scripture speaks of there being other gods in a metaphorical and figurative way. Because in some ways, some particular things in the world, in creation, some of those things remind us about God. And I'll explain. Angels are called gods on account of their excellent nature, in Psalm 97, verse 1. Magistrates or governing authorities are called gods because in their execution of their office, they should act in God's name. Exodus 22 verses 28. Men are called gods, particularly Moses is said to be a god to whom? A god to Pharaoh. And Aaron was Moses' mouth. Aaron was Moses' prophet. So revelation comes from God, comes from God to Moses to Pharaoh through Aaron, right? And so, yeah, Moses was like a God in that sense to Pharaoh. And so Satan is called the God of this world, depending on your interpretation of that verse. Satan is called the God of this world because of his permitted rule over it. But the true God rules all, including Satan, right? We know that. And of course, Scripture deals squarely with the fact that what do we do as sinful human beings? We make idols. We make idols. We make and fashion so-called gods and we give to them the worship and honor that is rightly due to the God of the Bible. So you see, Scripture speaks of there only being one true and living God, but it speaks of there being other gods. But in that sense, it's figuratively and metaphorically, there aren't really many, many gods. As Paul, as the Apostle Paul says, he says, therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world and that there is no other God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we owe for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live. The Lord our God is but one only living and true God. There is one living and true God, and anyone and anything else is just a so-called God. And this God is one. He's not only, he's not only only, he's one. Deuteronomy 6.4, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. God is absolute. And his essence cannot be divided. Otherwise, if you were to divide the essence of God, there'd be how many gods? Well, more than one, a lot, right? God is absolute. He is one. And we'll try to get into more of this when we consider God as a spirit, in this same paragraph, than when we consider the Trinity. But for now, what's confessed here in the Confession, what's confessed here is that He is absolute. He cannot be divided. He is one. And so again, we talked about how the confession lays down and sometimes takes for granted words that you think you know the meaning of, but then they'll unpack it later, anticipating explanations and unpacking those concepts in other parts of the confession. The Lord our God is but one only living and true God. Now we confess Him as the one only living and true God. Living because He is the fountain of all life. But in this context, it's speaking of His uniqueness as the only God that exists. It's to distinguish Him from the idols we do make and worship. So He's the living God, in contradistinction to the idols that we make. Why? He's the living God, and the idols that we make, they have no life in them. There is no life in those idols that we make. They can do nothing for us, because they do not actually exist. They have no power. We treat them as gods, but they're dead, as scripture mocks in several places. We turn created things into gods, and we worship them. But they are dead. They're blind. They're deaf. They're mute, as the scriptures repeatedly condemns them to be. And if we continue to give ourselves to idols, and to worship them, then what does scripture say happens? We actually become like those idols. You become what you worship. If we continue to give ourselves to idols to worship them, then we will become like them. We also will be blind. We also will be deaf. We also will be mute. We will never hear. We will never understand. We will be dead, just like they are. The Lord our God is the one only living God. And He is the true God. He is the true God because He is only God by nature and in reality. Yes, God is truth and He is true and He is truthful, but we're considering true here in relation to all other gods as imaginary. He is the only one who exists. He is the true God. You think of the Greek pantheon. It used to be a very favorite subject of mine to study as a kid. Reading some of the not-so-wonderful stories of the Greek gods and their escapades and Zeus and Hera. Poseidon, you know, we think of the Greek pantheon, we think of Thor and Odin, the animal gods of the Egyptians and other pagans, the god of self, right? That's the big man on campus in this contemporary age, the god of self. You know, atheists mock God by claiming that there's just enough evidence for the flying spaghetti monster, they call it, as there is evidence for the true God. But the Greek pantheon, Thor, Odin, the Egyptian gods, they're all lies. The Lord, Jehovah, is the true God, and that's what is meant here. Every other god is just imaginary. And so this is the plain teaching of Scripture. This is the plain teaching of scripture. There is one God, so the Christian faith is a monotheistic faith. It is not polytheistic, a faith which seeks to worship and posit the existence of many gods. And nowadays, still, there are several variations to that. We can think of Hinduism, and there are millions and millions of gods. We think of Mormonism, born and bred here in the United States of America. you know, that posits that you can become a god and have your own planet, apparently. And you have the responsibility to fill that planet up with your spiritual children. It's nonsense. It's absolute nonsense. It's false. It's a lie. The Christian religion, all those are perversions of the true religion. The Christian religion is monotheism. I am the Lord and there is no other. There is no God besides me. So that is what we mean when we talk about the singularity of God. Then we move to consider the independence and incomprehensibility of the one only living and true God. He is the only God that is and whose subsistence is in and of himself, infinite in being and perfection, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself. Friends, we are about to jump into some very deep waters, very deep waters. We must define terms and we must deal squirrelly with what the Scriptures teach about God. The Lord is the true God. He is the living God and the everlasting King, as Jeremiah 10 says. As, you know, Jeremiah proclaims to Israel, you know, there are no rivals. There are no rivals because there can be no rivals. God speaks through Isaiah, as he does, as he did in Jeremiah. He says, listen to me, O Jacob in Israel, my called, I am he, I am the first, I am the last. It's ridiculous to conceive of more than this one God because of what makes God, God. And that is one who is fully independent. How independent? His subsistence is in and of himself, infinite, without limits. in being and perfection. There is no other, and if there is no other one, that is because he is in no need of another one. He is independent. His being and perfection is infinite. They are without limitations. One God, no limit. So, this is what is meant when we speak of aseity. Some of you guys have heard that word if you read theology. If this is your first time hearing it, that's okay. Aseity means, is that divine property of being completely independent of everything distinct from God himself. Everything other than God depends on God. We depend on God. Everything depends on God. But God depends on nothing besides himself. God is self-existent, self-sufficient, self-sustaining. God is, does not have it in Him, either in purpose or power, to stop existing. He exists necessarily with no need of help or support from us. I mean, isn't that what the Apostle Paul says? God is independent. He has no need of us. He's in the book of Acts, speaking at Mars Hill. you know, God who made the world and everything in it since he is Lord of heaven and earth, and remember the context there, he's walking into Athens and he's considering all these monuments and statues to the gods that they have, and then, you know, just to cover their bases, they have a statue of the unknown God there, and he makes a comment, he says, God who made the world and everything in it since he is Lord of heaven and earth does not dwell in temples made with hands, Nor is he worshipped with men's hands as though he needed anything, since he is the one who gives life to all, breath and all. He gives to them life, breath and all things. That's the God of Scripture. He is fully independent. He is no need of anyone else. And Paul speaks very clearly. He gives to all life, breath and all things. If he is in no need of us, but rather he gives us everything, Do you think that includes existence? Yes. So then who gives God existence? He needs no one. Which means his subsistence is in and of himself. That's what he means in the confession. Now we need to define some more terms, okay? Now what is meant by subsistence? Now, we're going to have to stretch our brains, but friends, this is important, and we must be as precise and as nuanced as we can, because our confession makes nuances and tries to be precise. The English word subsistence, in this context, in the confession, as you read it there, in the first paragraph, means independent existence, God's self-existence. Now, we will see that this very same word, subsistence, is also used in a slightly different sense in paragraph three. When you have time, turn to paragraph 3, and what does it say there? In paragraph 3, it speaks of the Holy Trinity. Instead of the more common word, persons, it uses the word, what? Subsistences, right? Plural. Now, we will unpack that sense of the word, that sense and use of the word, when we get there. But here, in the first paragraph, the word subsistence is quite clear. It means God's existence, His self-existence, independent existence in and of Himself. Is everybody tracking? I know this can be really hard and dry stuff, but this is important. Now, what do we mean by existence? And seriously, I'm not trying to be pedantic. I'm not. But these English words must be parsed. They must be drawn out. And that's why, even though a contemporary edition of the Confession is wonderful, we have to stick with the original language because those are the words that we use to convey and to teach the doctrine of God. So we need to understand those words. We need to unpack the English words that are there, and they carry with them the usage of some of their equivalents in other languages, particularly Latin. Why am I reading so much Latin? Well, Latin was used almost exclusively for theological dialogue. It was the language of the scholars, and most books that dealt with theology were written in Latin. And so there's a long tradition in history of speaking theology in that language. So we need to unpack those meanings and also see how they connect to the English usage. So again, I'm not trying to be pedantic. Now, now we're ready for this. So the word ese, Latin word, means literally to be, existence or having being. Now, if something is, if something exists, then we are moved to consider what it is, right? I mean, if we know that something exists, okay, well, what is it? What is it? Does that make sense? If we're considering that something exists, something is, well, then the next question is, well, what? What does exist, right? Does that make sense? Okay. So then that gets us to consider essence, essentia. And essentia means essence. Now get this, it's whatness, right? We talk about what something is, the whatness of it. The whatness of a being, which makes the being precisely what it is. So we understand, I hope, the word essay, literally to be, existence, or having being. We consider the word essentia, essence, the whatness of a being. Now, in considering these terms, let's work to understand how God is unique. How it can be said that His subsistence is in and of Himself, and His being is infinite. We exist, we are beings, We are, right? We are. We exist. But what are we? Shout it out. Okay, no takers. We're human. Yeah, it's not that complicated. We are humans. So our essence, our essentia, is what? Human, humanity. That's our Oneness. That's what we are. We exist. What are we? We're human. Human being. That's right. Did you read my notes? We are beings. We are human beings. Now, God exists. What is the essence of God? Divinity. Divinity. And here is where we most clearly see the difference between us and God. Our essence and His essence are different, and this is what Scripture teaches. The last definition, essentia Dei, the essence or whatness of God. God is the only necessary, self-existent being, or in other words, the only being in whom Essay, Being, Existence, and Essentia, or Essence, are inseparable. They cannot be separated. It is of the Essence, or Wetness of God, that God exists. That's really hard to understand. But that's not the case for everything else that exists. That's why God is unique. Everything that exists, its essence, what they are, is separate from... Everything that exists and their essence is separate from that they are. I'll give you an example. My subsistence, my existence, my essay, my being, must be derived from outside of myself, outside of me. But that is not the case of God. All of us here in this room, we share what? We share the essence of what? Humanity, right? We share the whatness of humanity. But if I, as an individual, a being, and existence, a substance, stop existing, does humanity stop existing? How could it? Because in our case, existence and essence are separate. Right? My existence, my essence, they can be separated. I don't have to be here for you to be here. Does that make sense? And to know what you are, right? So they're separated. But there is only one divine essence. It is of God's essence that He exists. His subsistence is in and of Himself, and His being is infinite. Well, let's consider Exodus 3, 14. And God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I am has sent me to you. And Matthew, Henry. He comments on this saying this explains his name Jehovah and signifies that he is self-existent He has being of himself and has no dependence upon any other the greatest and best man in the world must say what? By the grace of God. I am what I am By the grace of God. I am what I am But God says absolutely and it is more than any creature man or angel can say he says I am that I am being self-existent, he cannot but be self-sufficient and therefore all sufficient and the inexhaustible infinite fountain of being in bliss. He whose subsistence is in and of himself. infinite being and perfection whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself and So who can fully comprehend this God? What he is and who he is if he is infinite then he is without limit and how can we measure that? We cannot fully comprehend him And, you know, that doesn't mean that we can't understand what He means for us to... It doesn't mean that we can't understand what He means for us to understand, just not exhaustively. We can come to know God and know Him truly, but we can't fully comprehend Him. Again, because we are finite, and He is infinite, and we cannot contain the infinite. That is where God takes care to communicate, to condescend down to us and communicate truth in ways that we can understand. But again, there will always be mystery. There will always be mystery when we're considering the doctrine of God. Now, don't be discouraged by that. But again, there's mystery just because there's mystery and that we cannot fully comprehend. All that God is doesn't mean that there's contradiction in scriptures or problems with the way that God chooses to communicate to us, but because of the great gulf that exists between our being in essence and His being in essence. There's just a huge gulf there. So remember, I talked earlier, before some of you came in, that we need to be trained how to speak about God and to be very careful. And anything that we do say or can say truly about God is ever the tip of the iceberg. We read on that the Lord our God is, He is a most pure spirit, if you're in that part of the paragraph. He is a most pure spirit, invisible without body, parts or passions. Again, we're going to have to wade into deep waters here, okay? Now, this is the reason why I had to break this lesson up. Like, I thought I could handle each paragraph in three lessons, but that's not the case, at all. It's so dense. You know, God is a Spirit, just quickly. That He's invisible is clear in so many places in Scripture. Our Lord makes this very clear when He's speaking to the Samaritan woman, God is Spirit. And those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. God is spirit. Paul teaches us in the great doxology, now to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. And then we can consider Moses' words about the Lord meeting with the nation of Israel, right? He takes careful, take careful heed of yourselves, for you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female. And then he goes on to talk about everything else in creation. God is most pure spirit, invisible, meaning there's no material form to him. He is without body, parts, or passions. No man has seen God at any time, and He truly is because no man can see Him and live. That is why it is said of Him that He alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen. He is a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts or passions, who only has immortality dwelling in light, in the light which no man can approach unto. We're running. Now, OK, I was going to try to unpack this statement. We just can't. You know, what does it mean for God to be without body, parts or passions? Now, I'm just curious. Who actually, and I know I posted it late, but who tried to attempt to answer the questions in the handout? It's okay. Okay, great. Okay. And what I was trying to help you to draw out was, is there a concern, when you hear this, that God is without passions, we can understand that He's without body, right? We can understand maybe that He's without parts, But what does it mean for God to be without passions? I mean, isn't God passionate? Isn't God passionate? Well, in the next lesson, we're going to try to unpack that. And I'll close with this. This gets to the doctrine of divine impassibility. Now, what is divine impassibility? Divine impassibility is defined as follows. God does not experience emotional changes either from within or affected, caused by his relationship to creation. In the next lesson, I'll be leaning heavily on a book by Dr. Samuel Renahan entitled God Without Passions, a primer. It's an extremely helpful work. And I'm sorry, I just can't, so I'm giving him all the credit. I can't explain it better than he did. I just can't. He has really done a great service to the church with a work like this. And it proves that such doctrines like impassibility, like the doctrine of impassibility, which we're going to go over, that's what we're trying to get at the root of that phrase, that God is without passions, right? It gets to the root of who God is. You know, how are we to make sense of the fact, so just to show you the dilemma, how are we to make sense of the fact that scripture teaches that God cannot change, and yet it speaks of God repenting and regretting? Right? You know, that God does not change. You know, it depicts God as having emotions. The Scriptures do. It depicts God having emotions. Anger, wrath, going from angry to not being angry. And experiencing, and being depicted as experiencing emotions like we do. Right? The Scriptures also say that. But then it also says that God does not change. Like, how can we understand that? So this is an important issue, an important doctrine. It says that God is not a man that he should repent. And then it talks about God repenting, about God regretting. Listen, this is not ivory tower stuff. This is extremely practical stuff. It will serve us to understand what the Bible teaches. And also, in the trenches of life, When our emotions, our love, our love and our emotions, they ebb and flow, right? That's who we are. They go up and down. We love some people one day and we don't love them the other, right? That's who we are. That's our nature. You know, but what about God? Is his love fickle like ours? Does it ebb and flow like ours, even though in scripture it's depicted as he has emotions like us? Again, this isn't just ivory tower stuff. This is extremely practical, worshipful stuff to consider. You know, God does not have affections. He has perfections. And how great of an anchor is that? You know, when we can be so easily slept away with the trials in our life. So this is extremely pastoral and helpful if we can come to understand this doctrine the right way. And that's what we will attempt to do next lesson, to try to see how we can come to understand all those places in scripture that speak of God having emotions like us, but then We know that in our emotions, they change, but it says that God doesn't change. How can we understand it? We can't. We can't.